Welcome To My Blog, News and Information about Iraqi Translators/Interpreters and Christians! The purpose of this blog is to shed light on the Iraqi reality that public opinion isn't aware of.

The Grand Mosque in Mosul where ISIS leader had preached in July 2014 will be the most important site to be liberated in Mosul. As Iraqi forces are advancing on the west bank of the city, and with the consecutive victories that they had achieved in the last few months, many people are focusing on certain areas inside the city of Mosul, and the Grand Mosque is one of them.

The Mosque that is dated back to to the year 1172, and was built by Nur ad-Din Zangi, who descends from a Turkish family. It is considered the oldest Mosque in the city and the area surrounding that Mosque was named after it.

According to witnesses from inside the city of Mosul, this Mosque has been revered greatly, and was seen of significant importance. One of the reason for that is because ISIS leader, Abu Bakir Al-Baghdadi had preached in it back in 2014 when Mosul city fell to ISIS and Iraq forces had withdrawn from it.

Eyes are fixed on the liberation of the Mosque, which I expect will be difficult, because of the importance of this site for ISIS leaders and fighters. The liberation of the Mosque will be a symbolic defeat, as much as there is defeat in reality for ISIS in Mosul, but yet this will end a bloody chapter inside Mosul, and in Iraq as well. The expectations are that ISIS fighters will do something to the Mosque before it falls in the control of Iraqi forces. It is unlikely that they will destroy it, but they might remove certain parts of the interior of the Mosque and hide it somewhere else. Particularly the pulpit, where ISIS leader preached.

The US can’t guarantee that the arms it provides to Syrian rebels will not “change hands” and fall into the possession of Islamic State, the State Department said, a day after President Obama eased weapons flows to Syria.

In a recent conversation I had with someone whom I consider with great knowledge about Terrorism issues. We were discussing the future of Middle East and the changing relationship between East and West at some point. But we later changed the conversation to focus more on ISIS. He stressed that “ISIS end is coming.” And the question that I asked him was: “End of what?” he then replied: “Territorial.”

It is difficult sometimes to understand that ISIS in its core is merely an ideology! This ideology has been fought for decades if not centuries, and it is not new or invented. It is just the fact that it has more followers than before, and also that social media and communication is making those followers and their practices more available and more spreadable.

In the recent attack that took place in France, which has been the most affected country from ISIS than any other, it seems that ISIS tactics have changed. Since France has a big “Arab-Muslim” population, especially Algerians, Tunisian, And Moroccans, and while it is difficult for authorities to identify radicalized individual from the community, it is with no doubt growing radicalization in Europe has been significant in the recent years. Nevertheless, there is a wide range of reasons why radicalization is happening in Europe, and definitely economy is not a reason!

While ISIS is suffering great deal on battle fields, their focus has shifted to carry out attacks on the West. These attacks are more inspirational than claiming territories because the base of their support has been broadened. This is also why the West, especially the US, has stopped many conspirators or affiliates who tried to join ISIS.

The bottom line is: ISIS needs to be fought from within. Their ideology needs to be refuted and defeated. And to defeat this ideology, it is not enough for Muslims to come out on TVs and on Internet platforms claiming that ISIS is not Islamic! There is a way to stop ISIS and that is by purifying sacred text and dismissing some theological concepts by Muslim leaders.

IT WAS not an auspicious start. On March 24th the government in Baghdad announced the beginning of operations to retake the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, from Islamic State (IS). The first phase went well. An Iraqi force of about 5,000 quickly overran several villages. But within a few days progress stalled, when a counter-attack by no more than 200 IS fighters resulted in the loss of the village of al-Nasr and the high ground it sits on. Some 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed. An American marine also died from a rocket attack on a small American “fire base”, established to provide artillery support, an indication of America’s expanding role in the conflict.

Iraqi officials still talk positively about pushing IS out of Mosul before the end of the year. It is a big prize: the mainly Sunni Arab city had a population of 2m when it fell to IS in June 2014, and is the key to regaining control of the northern province of Nineveh. But the setback at al-Nasr has been a reality check. Just to take and hold al-Nasr, the local operations command says it needs to bring in more tribal fighters and police.

Military analysts reckon there is, in fact, little prospect of a concerted attempt to regain Mosul before 2017. Michael Pregent, a former Intelligence Officer who served as an adviser to Kurdish peshmerga fighters in 2005-06 and worked with Sons of Iraq during the 2007 surge (and is now at the Hudson Institute, a think-tank), says no force large enough to do the job has been built. One under-strength Iraqi division with some American military advisers will not cut it. Pentagon sources reckon that a force of at least 40,000 will be needed.

The problems do indeed appear immense. Iraqi intelligence puts IS’s fighting strength in Mosul at around 10,000, although the Americans think that the number is dwindling as IS comes under pressure elsewhere. Whatever the precise figure, IS has had the best part of two years to build multilayered defences. Mr Pregent says that although there are reasonably capable peshmerga forces to the east of Mosul that can help, these units have little interest in trying to take a city that will never be a part of Kurdistan and in which their presence would provoke ethnic tensions.

The enemy also gets a vote, at least on the battlefield. Patrick Martin of the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank in Washington, DC, notes that a recent spate of spectacular suicide-attacks by IS in the south suggests that its strategy is now to destabilise Iraq’s southern provinces, thus putting pressure on the Iraqi army and the Hashd to restrict their operations in the north and west. IS knows that the fall of Mosul will signal, in effect, its defeat in Iraq; so it is determined to delay that moment for as long as it can. It may one day lose its bloody grip on the city. But when, how and at what cost it will be liberated, remains to be seen.

Suspected terrorists with links to ISIS on Saturday fired rockets containing unspecified chemical substances into a residential part of the northern Iraqi town of Taza, Iraqi security officials told CNN.

The attacks caused an unspecified number of casualties from suffocation, burns and dehydration.

Taza, which has a predominantly Shiite Turkmen population, is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Kirkuk.

In so many occasions we encounter people who would support and help ISIS in their fight – sometimes they do it blindly, without knowing what they are doing, and some other time, the people who would establish this type of approach would be coming in different forms and different causes; such as philanthropic organizations, or collecting money to build Mosque, or to help some needy families. But there is diffidently hidden source and movers who would collect money from people and take it to ISIS in some shape or form.

Here is a video that was circulated on the web, which is considered and innocent confession of “used to” collect money for ISIS, the good thing he is not going there, and that he is not involved in any of that!

ISIS Propaganda and its use of social media, made it one of the biggest organized terrorist group in the world. Giving it superiority over its predecessor “Al-Qaeda”, who is yet still effective in causing damage, but not effective in gathering supporter around it. ISIS has always displayed sensitive issues while using the video propaganda, this includes pushing forward with their savage and cruel machine to intimidate and put fear in the hearts of those who fight ISIS – like beheading foes and spies, burning enemies and drowning them, and executing attacks on barracks and some strategic locations in Iraq and Syria.

Their propaganda videos also include some philanthropic works which they do during certain occasions, such as Eid Al-Adha, where they present offerings from slaughtered animals to feed needy families. They also present videos about bread production in different areas in Syria!

I believe ISIS has two different “Messages” from their own videos, in which they target two different audience. The first is the internal audience, including those who have been trapped in a fight between ISIS and governmental authorities in Syrian and Iraq, and had no other choice but to escape. While they are escaping and seeking refuge in different parts of Iraq and Syria, they are being enticed to see their country-people who have lived under ISIS and how they are being treated in good manner (at lease what these videos show) – adding to that, the lack of services they receive in their destination and the uncertain future that they are facing (these people are mostly Arabic language speakers). ISIS focuses on the bread, as one sample of greater meaning they send to others, that their land is the land of plenty and abundance.

The second message they send is external message – specifically aimed to the West, and these messages include two branches A) To make intelligence communities busy and amazed by their propaganda so they won’t have time to search and execute any operations that eliminate ISIS danger, and this explains the variety of videos they send in different languages from different locations. This also includes messages that put fear in the hearts Western People, and an attempt to deter anyone trying to be part of a campaign, especially ground campaign, because this threatens ISIS the most, and I believe that this “type” of message has played great role in convincing congressmen and President Obama not to send troops on the ground, but only assisting with certain number of experts to help Iraqi forces, for instance!

B) To attract, recruit, and push the “Zeal” of Muslims sympathizers with ISIS around the world, this is why we see them speaking in different languages, interviewing different people from different countries. But there is this video in particular that caught my attention, which is titled: Auha Al-Lajee (O Refugee) – which is addressed to those refugees crossing by boats to Europe and other parts escaping conflicts and violence in Syria and Iraq.

This video was about 11 minutes, and used two main languages subtitled in Arabic, one of these languages was Russia, and the other was Turkish. Looking closer to the video and repeating it couple of times, I have came to certain conclusions which I will explain later in this article.

The video started with some devastating reports taken from Al-Jazeera and other Arabic channels, in which they show how hard it is to cross the sea and borders to get to European countries. In contrast, ISIS video showed kids playing, and head of families speaking about how good their life is under ISIS, and that they escaped bombing by Kurdish Forces.

The interviewed family members were claiming that they have escaped to Tal-Afar a town close to Mosul, they also have excessively thanked ISIS for their help and support. They also renounced and criticized Refugees who are leaving the land of Islam to the land of Kufur “Infidels” – and that is the main goal of the video.

Bu what is so significant about the two languages? As a speaker and expert of few languages – I see it very critical to associate languages with the geopolitical factors surrounding it. And I also believe that ISIS as a sophisticated terrorist organizations, is going to characterize this feature of referring to certain languages to serve their own purposes!

What do we know about Russian Language? and Why ISIS is using it this time?

Russian Speakers

Russian speaking fighters among ISIS are the highest number of foreign fighters, as it appears from the speaker, his accent and as they noted he is from Dagestan. Muslims of Dagestan are well known for their separation in 1999 from both Chechnya and Russia, and the Muslim body in that country started calling for a holy war against the Russian Forces. Dagestan’s Muslims, who tend to follow sufism combined with local tradition, generally steered clear of Chechen-style separatism, but after the late 1990s, radical and militant elements said to be linked with the more fundamentalist wahhabist tendency began to gain in influence.

Statistics

Estimates of 2014 say that the largest number of foreign fighters among ISIS come from Russia, they believed to be from Kyrgyzstan, Chechnya, and Dagestan. ISIS rely on fighters from Russia, and there are several reason to that, first is their knowledge in the area and the kind of weapons used in Iraq and Syria (Mostly Russian) – and also the poverty and deprivation that these countries live in made them easy target for ISIS recruiters. In addition to other reasons as well.

Turkish Speakers

Here comes the second part of the video – where people are talking Turkish language. This part was established on how bad the Western countries are, they have aimed to undermine all efforts made by European countries to assist refugees who are crossing from Turkey! This is why Turkish language is used here, and as I see it, there are two main reasons they used this language:

Many refugees die on the Turkish shores in their attempts to cross the sea, and they know that most of the smugglers are taking advantage of them and stealing their money and leaving them to an unknown destiny. I have lived in Turkey for about 2 years, and most of the smuggling networks are either monitored/supervised or run by Turkish Intelligence, and in the recent years they have done very little to prevent this phenomena from happening. One of the reasons is putting pressure on the European Union to include Turkey in that effort to fight smuggling and illegal immigration, and eventually to include Turkey to the European Union.

The second point relates to the first, but in different way! ISIS is seeking counter immigration to its territories by calling upon people to “Immigrate” to Syria and Iraq. Their message is, Turkey is the best spot to do this business “Smuggling/Immigrating”. Their propaganda is aiming to show the difference between people leaving the Islamic land and face death on the seashores, and between people fighting “infidels” and living in peace. In short, they are calling for more terrorists to join!

I still believe that their propaganda messages can be always intercepted and abolished by establishing centers in the countries where these terrorists are “immigrating” from, and if they are not immigrating, they are committing all these atrocities and terrorist acts against their own citizens. Global intelligence cooperation is not enough to stop the flow of ISIS terrorists, everyday there is new generation of ISIS being born and created somehow, somewhere. Therefore, fighting intellectual ideas is the most effective fight against ISIS propaganda!